A Greek Skeleton Out of the Closet.

Jeff—Saturday

I bet there are very few of us who don’t have a metaphorical skeleton or two hanging around in some closet. Just look at the US Presidential candidates.  Those two have skeletons dancing all over the place. Though to be fair, one candidate looks to have far more skeletons haunting it than the other, while the other seems hell bent on becoming a skeleton to haunt us all.

I’ll let you work out the appropriate labels for yourselves.

Prescinding from any further discussion of politics, I think we can all agree it’s truly rare when a “skeleton in the closet” turns out to actually exist.

Well, once again Greece has astounded the world.

This week, world newspapers reported on an archaeological find disclosed by Greece’s Minister of Culture. The headline in Ekathimerini—Greece’s equivalent of The New York Times—read, “Ancient Teenage Skeleton Unearthed on Mountaintop Could Confirm Darkest Greek Legend.”  Here’s a photo of the discovery.

That headline caught my eye, because up until that moment I thought the darkest Greek legend was being written this year on Mykonos.  Just goes to show what I knew.

That discovery undoubtedly will further fuel a long raging debate over the role of classical writings in evaluating archaeological evidence.   And here’s why (quoting from Ekathimerini):

“Excavators say it’s too early to speculate on the nature of the teenager’s death but the discovery is remarkable because the remote Mount Lykaion [in central Peloponnese] was for centuries associated with the most nefarious of Greek cults: Ancient writers — including Plato — linked it with human sacrifice to Zeus, a practice which has very rarely been confirmed by archaeologists anywhere in the Greek world and never on mainland Greece.”

A dig site on Mount Lykaion

Human Sacrifice in Greece! Wow, imagine all the stories that will spawn. Forget Game of Thrones and vampires, a whole new genre of Hellenic Horror fiction awaits! 

This is not the first time archaeologists have unearthed what’s been claimed to be evidence of human sacrifice here, but alternative explanations always seemed to spring up to send those theories off into the shadows, and supporting literary references were dismissed as just that—fiction; even though archaeologists such as the legendary Heinrich Schliemann used Homer and Virgil as engines for some of his most spectacular discoveries. 

Heinrich Schliemann

What makes this week’s announcement so remarkable is that the literary and physical evidence appears to strongly support one another. 

According to legend, a boy was sacrificed with the animals and all the meat was cooked and eaten together. Whoever ate the human part would become a wolf for nine years.

“Several ancient literary sources mention rumours that human sacrifice took place at the altar, but up until a few weeks ago there has been no trace whatsoever of human bones discovered at the site,” said excavator David Gilman Romano, professor of Greek archaeology at the University of Arizona.

“Whether it’s a sacrifice or not, this is a sacrificial altar ... so it’s not a place where you would bury an individual. It’s not a cemetery,” Romano told The Associated Press.

Zeus on His Altar on Mount Lykaion (Giovanni Tiepolo)

For those of you interested in reading more on the discovery here’s a link to the AP story appearing in The Guardian.

If your interests run more to human sacrifice of the political sort, just turn on any television, anytime, anywhere.

I’m off to find a legend of my own.  She arrives Monday. :)

—Jeff